Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy creates ‘long-range impact’ command to strike Russian energy sector
New initiative to focus ‘100%’ on damaging Moscow’s ability to wage war; strikes on Kyiv injure six. What we know on day 1,599 Continue reading...
Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv reaches ‘political’ agreement with US on Patriot interceptor production licences
Key supplies of interceptors to arrive in the next few days, as talks also continue on a ‘drone deal’, Zelenskyy says. What we know on day 1,598Ukraine and the US have reached a political agreement on licences for production of PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday, adding that key supplies of the missiles were to arrive in the next few days. The Patriot is a US-made air defence system. Its PAC-3 interceptor is one of the few western weapons capable of shooting down the ballistic missiles Russia has increasingly fired at Ukrainian cities. Zelenskyy, speaking to reporters after returning from a Nato summit and talks withDonald Trump in Turkey, also said that talks were proceeding with the US on a “drone deal” or joint drone production.Discussions will proceed with Ukraine’s European allies on developing a separate anti-missile system, Zelenskyy said on Thursday, with a meeting planned for France in the near future. “It’s for ballistic targets, similar to Patriot, but more, I would say, mass-produced and a cheaper system,” he said.A top Ukrainian official has cautioned that it could take a year or more for the country to produce Patriot interceptor missiles. The Kremlin said the licence deal reflected what it called Washington’s “ambivalence” but noted it appreciated Trump’s efforts to help broker a peace deal to end the war, which Russia launched over four years ago.Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Russia struck an ammunition warehouse during its attack on the Kyiv region earlier this week, adding that a criminal probe was launched. In the small town of Vyshneve on Kyiv’s western outskirts, the Russian strike hit the warehouse and set off massive secondary explosions on 6 July. Ukrainian officials said 10 people were killed in Vyshneve and hundreds of houses were damaged. Ukrainian officials rarely disclose any damage to military targets after Russian attacks.Russian strikes killed at least 265 civilians in Ukraine and injured 1,816 in June, the highest combined casualty count since the first months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, a top UN official told the Security Council on Thursday. UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said the number of civilians killed and injured in Ukraine in May had been the highest since April 2022, but data from the UN’s Office of the high commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) pointed to an even higher toll in June, and possibly July. In total, OHCHR has verified that at least 16,402 civilians, including 802 children, had been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, and 48,428 had been injured, including 2,948 children. Russian authorities have reported that 250 civilians were killed and 1,596 were injured inside Russia in the first six months of 2026, but the UN was not in a position to verify the reports, DiCarlo saidUkraine opened a criminal investigation Thursday, a day after crowds of people in the western city of Lviv surrounded and overturned an army conscription vehicle. The incident drew a swift backlash from top Ukrainian officials, including Zelenskyy, who called it “a very bad story.” Ukraine has seen a steady increase in clashes between citizens and army conscription police since Russia’s invasion in 2022, with authorities reporting over a hundred such incidents this year alone. The unrest erupted after officers detained a man suspected of evading military service and took him to a draft centre, authorities said. Videos published on social media showed crowds surrounding and attacking a vehicle in Lviv late Wednesday, shouting “shame” and filming with their phones. A police officer who arrived to calm the crowd was later attacked, according to prosecutors. Continue reading...
